Rookie QB Yates not motivated by draft-day experience

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Last week, the second victory, was against Cincinnati’s Andy Dalton, the 35th choice in the 2011 NFL Draft. Today’s opponent features the No. 1 overall pick, Carolina’s Cam Newton. And in a couple of weeks against Tennessee, should Matt Hasselbeck’s calf continue to be an issue, it might be Jake Locker, who was drafted eighth, taking the snaps.

T.J. Yates was nabbed 152nd overall by the Texans, a fifth-round selection.

He knew he wasn’t going to get a phone call on the draft’s first day, and likely not during the second day, either. So he and his family did their best to remain distracted. His father occupied himself with work, while his mother assembled jewelry. Yates and one of his brothers plopped down in front of the television, keeping an eye on the draft but mainly watching a movie.

“I’m pretty sure it was something in “The Fast and the Furious’ series,” he said Wednesday, smiling.

Sure, he noted when quarterbacks were selected in front of him – for the record, there were eight in all snatched up before Yates – but he understood the process. After all, this was someone who was invited to the league’s annual combine as a “hired arm,” which is how Yates described his role at the NFL’s annual meat market in Indianapolis recently to Yahoo Sports. The North Carolina prospect was there mainly to throw to all of the wide receivers and tight ends, not to strut his stuff.

“You know how much hype each guy is getting, and you have an idea of where you’ll go,” Yates said.

He wasn’t surprised, and he wasn’t disappointed.

Part of the well-established lore with a couple of current high-profile quarterbacks is how they dealt with draft snubs, using the perceived slights as career fuel. For Tom Brady, it was being the seventh quarterback taken in the 2000 draft – watching the New England star get emotional during ESPN’s excellent “The Brady 6” is riveting. Poor Aaron Rodgers – still a first-round choice in 2005, but at 24th overall, far longer than most, himself included, thought he’d last.

T.J. Yates’ circumstances are entirely different, which isn’t to suggest his career will parallel theirs. But given that he’s attempting to guide the Texans deep into the playoffs, perhaps to a Super Bowl – the same, realistic goal shared by Brady and Rodgers – it’s within reason to trace any connection.

Unfortunately, he has no axe to grind. He isn’t motivated from the draft-day experience, no desire to prove anything to the other 31 teams that passed on him.

“Does he have a chip on his shoulder? I don’t see it,” Yates’ father, John, said. “But he does have a drive to succeed.”

Here’s how Yates explains the NFL:

“Guys in this profession are competitors. You want to believe you’re better than the next guy. If you don’t think that, you’ve got something wrong with you.”

“Growing up, he was always the tallest, always the best athlete,” his father said. “He never had to work too hard. Honestly, if there were a concern we had for him in school – it was that he wasn’t aggressive enough.

“Everything came easy for him.”

That changed once he went to Chapel Hill. A new coaching staff, a new offense – and a new approach to a sport he once regarded as second to basketball. The mental demands of playing quarterback challenged Yates in a way he’d never been before – and it was exhilarating. Always a quick study – father recalls taking three minutes to show son an up-and-under basketball move in fourth grade and being amazed that son used it to perfection in the next recreational league game – Yates realized that having a thorough and complete understanding of the offense provided a distinct advantage.

It wasn’t always that way.

“He wasn’t lazy,” his father said. “He enjoyed sports growing up, but he didn’t have what we might call that killer instinct. He just wanted to play.”

Which hasn’t changed, and might help explain why he’s been able to mesh so seamlessly with the rest of the Texans’ starters. He won’t be the most acclaimed, entertaining or iconic rookie quarterback on the field today at Reliant, but he’ll be the one guiding his franchise to its first postseason berth.

“He’s so well-grounded,” Texans quarterbacks coach Greg Knapp said. “He doesn’t look at it from ‘who am I going against on the other side of the field and their offense’ – it’s ‘how well can I execute our offense and how can I get better to help improve our team.’

“He’s team-oriented. That’s one of the things we liked about his personality, and he has displayed that by the way he has taken over.”